A key focus of this blog is the history of Jacksons in Ireland. I am specially curious about those who may be related to Sir Thomas Jackson (1841-1915). His life is key to understanding how a dozen or so young men, sons of Irish tenant farmers, shaped the future of international banking in the Far East in the late 1800s. I also use this blog as a place for playful posts: book and restaurant reviews, recipes, and events in my life. WARNING: Note the date of each post. Some may be outdated.

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Monday, May 4, 2015

Aghavilly – Birthplace of Sir Thomas Jackson

On Saturday last, thanks to the driving savvy and instincts of
Christine Wright, I found what I was seeking in the townland of Aghavilla, in
the parish of Carrigallen, Co. Leitrim - the
birthplace of Sir Thomas Jackson (1841-1914). The first Jackson connection to the land - at least the first that I know about - was revealed in the 1838
marriage settlement of Thomas Jackson’s parents: David Jackson (1814-1889) &
Eliza OLIVER (1815-1903):

… the said
David Jackson is now legally possessed of and entitled unto all that and those
that part of the lands of Aughavillawith the houses and appurtenances thereunto
belonging situate in the County of Leitrim aforesaid, and containing eighty-six acres, and seventeen perches
or thereabouts, late Irish plantation measure, all which lands are lying and
being in the Parish of Carrigallen, and barony of Carrigallen in said County -
To hold to the said David Jackson his Heirs and Assigns for ever at the yearly
rentof one guinea per acre…

From the description, this seems to have been a lease in
perpetuity. The surveyor’s notebooks in the Valuation Office Field Books of
1841, describe the holding in ways that make it seem to be marginal – at least
when it comes to profitable farming:

Cold clayed and
gravelly

Soil lies steep
rather shallow on cold white gravel subsoil

Also tolerable

21.0.6 of dry
healthy bog well sheltered

16.0.32 of good
rushy pasture

It wasn’t until I felt how squishy the land was underfoot, that
I fully grasped the implications ofgood rushy pasture. Good for not much, it would seem.There is no way that such land could
support cattle or horses grazing throughout much of the year. Goats and sheep
would be the largest animals that fields like these could support.

Goats grazing in a rushy field in an adjacent farmland.

The townland of Aghavilla has more trees than it did in the mid-1800s,
but many of the newly planted groves are struggling. The trees are spindly,
and covered in moss and lichen. On the plus side, the quick darting of the
Goldcrest Warblers, Ireland’s smallest bird, add vibrancy to the landscape, as
does the thicket of sound that they create. If you look down at your feet,
there is a wonderland of colour. Primroses and wild garlic flower along the
road side, and trout are in abundance in the nearby lakes.

Native Bluebells

Had it not been for a mix of maps, both current road maps as well as land-holding maps from Griffiths, we would never have found
the townland at all. Truth be told, it also required directions from a stranger who
came out of her house wondering what we were up to. Beneath is the 1857 map:

The Townland of Aghavilla, parish of Carrigallen, Co. Leitrim

The section of Aghavilla that the Jacksons leased most likely included 10a.
The layout is useful when compared to both today’s Google Earth, and what we
found on the ground. Drawings, from the 1857 maps, are not always 100%
accurate, but they are a good start.

INSERT detail of 10a.

Portion of the townland of Aghavilla.

As for value of the buildings which can be seen on the map,
another surveyor’s notebook from a few months after the first one included a
description of the house and buildings:

Dwelling: Quality
2A 39.3 X 21.9 feet12.6 high £5.4 NOTE: This category of 2A meant that the house was thatched, and
built of stone or brick and the walls were built using lime mortar. At least
the wind didn’t whistle through.

Office shed NOTE: “Offices” in this context
refer to “outbuildings” – most commonly associated with the needs of farming.

2A 66.6’ X 12.3’
6’ high

2A 13.6 X 14.6 7.0
high

3C+ 31.0 X 15.0
6.6 high

3C+ 15 X 16.6 6.0
high

“ordinary
situation”

This house pictured above has roughly the same dimensions to the
house that was described in 1841, and is in about the same location. That
being said, it would take someone (who is more expert than I will ever be) to
make the judgement call that this was David Jackson’s in 1841. Also, there might
not have been two chimneys in the original house, nor – of course - would there
have been a TV aerial.

This photo shows the current outbuildings
and their relationship to the house – not an exact match to the layout shown in
10a in 1857, but close. The chimney of the house can be seen behind the cinder block shed.

The cement block part of
this building shown in the foreground above is obviously a later iteration of the building, but the rock wall section reveals
that it was built on top of the old walls and foundation.

Thanks to the visitation books of the Carrigallen Presbyterian
Church, we know that the Jacksons lived at Aghavilla, at least between 1838 and
1846. Rev. John Fisher recorded one Jackson communicant
in the household - presumably Eliza. Her husband’s name was not noted, but we
know that he was affiliated with the Church of Ireland, and also had little
interest in churches of any stripe. It was always Eliza, not David, who prevailed
when it came to the spiritual welfare of their children. Four of them were
listed in the visitation book:

John Born

Thos born NOTE: This is the future Sir Thomas Jackson

Mary born 1844 NOTE her older sister Elizabeth b. 1843 was not included in
this list.

Andrew Coulter Bradford April 5,
1846

Even though the family would have been regarded as middle
class, the records reveal that they were on the bottom rung and slipping. The
value of their Aghavilly land went from a value of £5.4 on January 1841, down
to £4.18.0 a year later - a 23% drop in value. By 1856, in the post-famine era,
the lease was held by a Hugh Rorke. The land was worth even less than it had
been a decade earlier, and the Jacksons were now living at Urker in South
Armagh. The last record that I have found of David Jackson
in connection to Aghavilla is a land drainage document dated September 29,
1848:

SCHEDULE
REFERRED TO IN THE FOREGOING AWARD, AND FORMING PART OF THE SAME.

Name of Proprietor

Lands Charged

Barony in which Lands are situate

County in which Lands are situate

David Jackson of Aughavilla in the County of
Leitrim Esquire

Townland of Aughavilla

Carrigallen

Leitrim

So, what to make of all this? As a result of seeing the
actual land, as opposed to simply reading about it in legal documents, my assumptions
about what kind of farming the Jacksons had engaged in have changed. Even
though the taller of the two out-buildings suggested a use as a cattle or horse
barn, the land would have been unsuitable for grazing for a good part of the
year. They probably used some of the smaller out-buildings for feed storage and
for a few pigs, and there would also have been chicken coops, and possibly
rabbit hutches. Modest structures such as these were never noted by the
surveyors.

On the drive home, Christine and I kept coming back to the
question of not only how and why the Jacksons ended up here, but also: Why did they stay as long as they did? Even
today, the townland of Aghavilly is isolated and most neighbours are a good
walking distance away. The road that leads up it would have been little more
than a trail in the 1840s. Given the frequency of rain, and flooding, I imagine
that horse-driven carts would often have been stuck in the muck. The land was
so wet that the locals used to joke that land in Leitrim was sold by the
gallon, not by the acre. The larger hollows became lakes; the smaller ones ended
up as either puddles or rain-sodden fields.

In the London Underground, when the train slows to a stop, a
voice cautions: Mind the gap. We
would do well to do this here. The only other clue – and it is a slim one at
that - is a deed
from 1790 involving an Alexander Wilson late
of Denroman [aka Dunraymond] in the
Co. of Monaghan but then of Aughavilly. Wilson was a famer who had business
dealings with Thomas McCullagh, one of Thomas Jackson’s great-uncles and a well-heeled
farmer and linen trader in Co. Monaghan. The graveyard of the Church of Ireland cemetery in
Carrigallen is thick with Wilsons. Are they the key to learning how Thomas
Jackson came to be born here? It is not impossible that David Jackson may have inherited
this land from Thomas McCullagh, land which had been previously deeded to
Alexander Wilson. On the other hand: Mind
the gap.

2 comments:

Thanks Dave. I was thinking of people like yourself who live here, and who might have had a good chuckle as I was trying to read the road map which kept changing as we were on A201 one minutes and then N201 the next - or something like this. We would be in the North for a few moments, and then in the South, and then back again - all on the same road, but with different numbering systems.

About Me

Author And Researcher. I am currently writing a book on the life of Sir Thomas Jackson. He was the son of tenant farmers, born just before the Famine in South Armagh, who was knighted because he not only lead HSBC into the 20th Century, but was also responsible for assisting with the funding of much of the economic development in China & Japan in the late 1800s. My first published book was "Some Become Flowers: Living with Dying at Home".